Jealousy

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

After you have a bad case of stomach flu or something, when you’ve thrown up everything you’ve ever even thought of eating, there comes a point when you actually feel pretty good. It’s usually after you finish a long session of heaving, when you flush, wipe your mouth, maybe brush your teeth gingerly for the tenth time, and find out you can walk. Shakily, like a newborn colt.

The world looks clearer and sharper, and you think you might have the flu beat—but the trembling in your arms and legs tells you you’re lying to yourself.

That was how I felt. Bruised and shaky, but pretty good, at least for a little while. I figured if I could get to a bed before the exhaustion hit, I’d be doing pretty good.

But first, I had to see Augustine.

He was in a private room in the infirmary’s calm cloister, but this one was different than the one Ash had been strapped down in, or even the one they’d been trying to save me in. His was on an outer wall, a bed and a window, and it looked like a high-end hospital suite. It was even done in peach and cream, and for a second I was so lightheaded I was afraid I would fall down right there and then.

Because it still smelled like a hospital. Like disinfectant, medicine, pain. And grief. The touch throbbed inside my aching head like a sore tooth.

Augie’s apartment in Brooklyn was pretty neat and clean, considering a single guy lived there. I made it shipshape in the month I spent there.

He and Dad worked on clearing out a demonic rat infestation. And then Dad was up near the Canadian border doing something, and I hung with August. Who never, I realized now, let me very far out of his sight even in the apartment. A month in one of the biggest, coolest cities in the world, and all I’d known was that one street in Brooklyn.

Now that I knew Augie was djamphir, I wondered if he could teach me to light someone’s cigarette that way. I was hoping to get the chance to ask him.

He and Dad had argued all the time about the Real World, whether the authorities knew and were deliberately keeping the knowledge down, or whether people didn’t want to know and so ignored it. Now the faint smile on August’s face during all those arguments made sense.

Other things I remembered made sense, too. Like August’s voice while I lay in bed and tried to sleep, listening to him and Dad. That girl deserves to be with her own kind. And how beat-up he’d been coming back a few times, and how he’d healed so fast. How many times while I was there had he been killing suckers?

Had any of the suckers he’d killed been after me? Had they even suspected I existed? I could have been in danger and not even known it.

Jesus.

August lay on the bed, swathed in white bandages. His dark eyes were sleepy, blond hair mussed like he’d just spent a hard night tossing around. The bruises were fading, but he had the faraway look of someone on some really good tranquilizers. His right hand lay, curiously pale and unbandaged, against the peach coverlet.

“He’s sedated,” Christophe said quietly. “Enough to give his psyche and body some room to repair themselves. Shock can kill, more than the actual injuries.”

I made it to the side of the bed, Christophe hovering right behind me. “Augie?” I sounded about five years old.

He blinked. His right shoulder was a huge mass of bandaging. “Eh, Dru.” The “New Yahk” wheeze cut every vowel short like it personally offended him. “Good to see you, sweetheart.”

I grabbed at his hand. I couldn’t talk. Everything I wanted to say crowded up in my throat, got jammed, and I let out a sound like a sob.

“Oh, don’t do that.” For a moment he was the old August, a crooked smile that said he was laughing at the world, his eyebrows lifted just a little. You could see a flash of what he was when he laughed, through his swollen face and the fog of sedation. “What do I got to do to get you to bring me a bottle of vodka, girl?”

A half-sob, half-laugh jolted out of me. I was so relieved I swayed next to the bed. “I can’t buy vodka, Augie. I’m sixteen.”

“That never stopped you.” He grinned, but his eyes were drifting closed. One leg was bigger than the other under the covers—probably bandaged, too. “Make me an omelet, sweetheart. I’m beat. Been a long night.”

“Sure I will.” I’d make him fifty omelets, by God. “What happened to you, Augie?”

“Soon’s you called me I started thinking.” His eyes closed, then snapped open as he struggled to stay awake. “Then, nobody knew about you. Couldn’t find you for weeks. But Dylan called, and that’s when things got inneresting.”

“He’ll be debriefed once he’s well enough,” Christophe murmured. “Dru—”

“Met him in Pomona. He had a copy of the transcript, told me where to find the rest of it. Whole place was jumping with nosferat. We got taken.”

“That’s enough.” Christophe said, more firmly. “I should get her into bed, Augustine. We’ll talk later.”

“Sergej,” Augustine whispered, and I went cold. My teeth threatened to chatter, and a shard of pain lodged itself inside my skull. “Sergej had some of the pieces. Got us both. Dylan . . . we got separated. Poor kid.”

I all but choked. So Dylan had been alive after the other Schola burned down. Relief warred with fresh worry, fought over me like two dogs with a bone. I was shaking and sweating, and suddenly aware that I couldn’t smell too good.

“I found the other stuff, and then . . . but I was being watched. Everyone I visited had a piece, but they got swarmed after I left. Nosferatu didn’t want us to know, and we were burned. Every one of us, burned bad.”

I held my breath. “Burned” isn’t good. It’s what you say when one of your own betrays you.

When you’re given to the enemy.

Don’t let the nosferatu bite. . . . Oh, that’s easy. I’ll take care of that. A prearranged signal, from the very location.

The shaking got worse. If August hadn’t been drugged to the gills he might have noticed me trembling. I heard feathered wings and tasted a ghost of wax oranges.

Anna had come to my house expecting to betray my mother and looking for Christophe. She’d made sure I was sent to the other Schola and visited it herself to see what I remembered.

To see if I’d told anyone about something I couldn’t remember without the help of the touch, something I’d had no idea I remembered. She’d betrayed a whole Schola full of kids to Sergej.

But why? I was still no closer to understanding that. When you knew what the nosferatu did to djamphir, when you’d seen what they did to the bodies, how could you do that? That was the part I didn’t get.

August said something, slurred and full of consonants. And to my surprise, Christophe leaned in from behind me. He freed my limp sweating fingers and squeezed August’s hand himself. He also answered in the same language.

The wounded djamphir’s eyes closed fully. He sighed and murmured something else. Then he was asleep.

“God.” My voice wouldn’t work right, but I was going to whisper anyway. You always want to do that when someone’s in the hospital. Whisper like a creeping mouse. I’d whispered to Gran as she lay dying, holding on as long as she could for me.

Don’t leave me, I’d begged in that same creeping-mouse voice because my throat wouldn’t work right. Gran, I love you, please don’t leave me.

But she couldn’t stay. I was always holding onto people, and they were always leaving.

I couldn’t help myself. I touched August’s limp fingers again. “Don’t leave me, Augie.” I knew he couldn’t hear me, but still. “Okay? Don’t go.”

“He’ll be fine.” Christophe put his arm over my shoulders. “I promise he will live, moj maly ptaszku.”

I almost broke down again right there. My arm stole around Christophe’s waist as I straightened. I leaned into him, and he didn’t move. It was like leaning against a statue. He held himself absolutely still, the creepy-still of an older djamphir. He barely even breathed.

My knees were pretty rubbery. “You mean it?” I tried not to sound like I was begging. Jeez, my tough-girl image was never going to recover from all this.

I wasn’t sure I cared at this point.

“I do.” Christophe pulled me away from the bedside. “He’s survived worse, and he’s bandaged and medicated. Now all he needs is rest.”

I went reluctantly, glad I was holding onto him. The all-right-but-shaky part of the feeling was going away, and I was beginning to crash big-time. My head felt like a pumpkin balanced on the too-thin stem of my neck, my arms and legs kept doing weird little shaking-away things, and dark little speckles started dancing around the edges of my vision.

“Christophe?”

He got me out through the door, closed it quietly. Braced me, and started heading across the infirmary, my feet dragging against the stone floor. “What?”

I wanted to tell him I needed to see Ash, too. I wanted to tell him I was going to start looking for Graves, since we had time now, right? I also wanted to ask him to sit down and explain Anna from the beginning. I wanted—no, I needed to know how she ended up like this.

But the warm spot in the middle of my stomach was shrinking steadily. The hurts had mostly gone away, but I was weak as a newborn kitten. I felt like one, too—blind and making little noises. I was still trying to ask him all the questions I so desperately needed answers to when he shushed me gently and half-carried me away.